


Another Hope

by captainangua



Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Awesome Leia Organa, Finn-centric, Gen, I have never written star wars, POV Finn (Star Wars), Past Leia Organa/Han Solo
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-02-06
Updated: 2017-02-05
Packaged: 2018-09-22 08:07:57
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,552
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9595058
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/captainangua/pseuds/captainangua
Summary: When Finn woke up the medics were kind. They patted his cheek like he was some kind of lucky token, and they told him he had visitors.





	

**Author's Note:**

> I feel like I am not looking hard enough because I feel like I don't have enough Finn wakes up fics in my life so this is sorta happening. Also Carrie being strangled by her own bra is motivating me to finish this thing that has been sitting in my drafts for so very long

When Finn woke up the medics were kind. They patted his cheek like he was some kind of lucky token, and they told him he had visitors.

The medics had been consistently kind to him, so Finn definitely didn’t expect to actually see any visitors. The whole thing still felt like it had to be a whacked out dream. Meeting people, seeing the galaxy, having a friend. None of it felt real, and waking up wasn’t helping with that.

Especially because he _did_ get visitors.

And they all looked at him like he was some kind of mascot too.

They’d actually even had one of those in his adolescent unit, once, a mascot. A little rodent creature F-N9261 had found out on their first patrol on a sand planet Finn had long forgotten the name of. They’d all loved that little guy. Well, most of them had. Finn had admittedly thought it was gross and that it had too many tails to be hygienic or make any sense.

He’d still felt something aching and strange when his captain had found their mascot and killed it.

The thing itself had been disease-carrying and overrated by their whole troop, who’d insisted on giving it a name and trying to teach it tricks, but it had become something like a symbol, and to know it was dead mainly because their captain so hated them having any hope was… demoralising.

So he took little stock in being a mascot to others. It held no rewards, so far as he’d ever seen.

“I just feel like people think I can deliver on things and… I mean I am not complaining about the hero worship or the presents,” he rushed to explain later to Poe, who’d come around visiting again. (Again. Someone had come back to see him more than once, someone genuinely enjoyed his company.) “But it’s like… I’m more of a symbol than a person to these people? I don’t know, it’s weird.”

Poe had shrugged at that and stolen another handful of Finn’s gummy sweets. He called them windmills since they were shaped like little wheels, but Finn wasn’t sure he understood the reference behind it. Pow had tried to explain the concept of the real world existence of it and though it sounded kinda dumb, Finn was admittedly interested. He liked understanding how things worked. Working on giant ships and never being able to understand how all of it functioned had been maddening.

“You give people hope, man. Just enjoy the attention while it lasts, you deserve it.”

“Like you?”

“Sure, everyone loves a hero,” Poe agreed easily, a wide grin stealing over his face. “’Sides, like I said, free gifts.” The pilot narrowed his eyes mockingly. “Where _did_ my favorite jacket get to?”

Finn snorted, even as he clutched his hospital blankets a little tighter. Was his only friend here going to start hating him for losing his stuff?

“I think Rey has it,” he managed, knowing he sounded more tense than he wanted to.

To his embarrassment, Poe picked up on some of his discomfort. “Hey, buddy, no worries. That’s gonna be the best travelled jacket in the galaxy soon though, heh?”

“Sure will be,” Finn said grinning, and hating himself a little for the pathetic amount of relief he felt.

He didn’t have much else to worry about in the sick bay. The nurses made sure he had little to do at all but rest and occasionally practice walking, and between the infrequent visitors that was basically all the activity he did.

Until about after a week after he’d woken up and the medic came to tell him that he Had A Visitor.

“Ok,” Finn said slowly, putting down the book someone had left with him and sitting up a little, wondering what made this one any different.

Then the door opened a few moments later and he understood exactly what made this different.

“General Organa,” he stammered out as he rushed so quickly to sit up that he hit his head on the back wall.

“Don’t get up on my account,” the general ordered briskly, but there was a… warmth in the woman’s tone that made Finn relax a little against his better judgement.

They’d held Han Solo’s funeral two days before Finn had woken up.

Looking at her now he knew he was squinting, feeling like it would help in figuring out if the General thought it was his fault – not that she knew how Finn had deceived them in acting like he knew what he was doing, but… still. He’d meant nothing to anyone, and he’d made it back.

“You’re looking better,” she said, and it was certainly not a question.

“I feel more awake at least,” Finn tried to joke. Though the general didn’t exactly _smile_ her lips sort of… twitched.

“I’m sorry about General Solo,” he blurted out when she moved forward but said nothing.

“You spent a few days with him, didn’t you?” she asked, a faint smile now creeping over her face.

“I did. I don’t think Solo liked me much, but he kept me alive. He was pretty… incredible to watch in action too.”

She snorted softly and sat down on the edge of his bed. “I thought he’d stopped letting anyone call him ‘Solo’ these days.”

Finn’s throat went a little dry. “He doesn’t – didn’t. But I – I did, and he…”

“Don’t worry about me, boy,” she said, and the way her smile made the lines on her face crinkle made something in him collapse a little.

“No one respected that man less than I did,” she said, before adding in a murmur, “or loved him more.”

Finn wasn’t sure how to respond to that. He’d watched a lot of people die in his life, but for some reason the death of Han Solo stood out, bright in his memory, burning and inescapable.

“I hear you knew my son.”

If Finn had felt frozen before… “You mean…”

“He calls himself Kylo Ren. Yes.”

“Kylo Ren was our commander, uh, ma’am.”

“You were afraid of him?”

“Everyone was,” Finn blurted out defensively before he was able to think. By all the dumb shit he could pull in talking to his new commander, insulting and attacking her entire family wasn’t the way to win her round.

_You’re a mess, FN-2187._

“I didn’t come here to speak to you when you’re not feeling your best about my family.”

Finn’s head jerked up. “You didn’t?”

She looked almost bashful, and didn’t smile.

“No. I actually wanted to…” She sighed. “Finn, you have a unique perspective… Your _background_ isn’t normally one we ever…” He got the sense that the general was struggling for words, “come into contact with.”

Finn wasn’t sure he understood where she was going with this but he nodded along. “Uh… right.”

She sighed. “It’s just… we’ve been working hard on a new campaign-”

“I don’t know anything about the First Order’s battle strategy, ma’am.”

“No! That’s not what I meant, I…” She sighed again. “It’s not a war campaign. It’s a propaganda campaign – the kind we’re famously not any good at.”

“So…” Finn frowned, trying to act less lost than he felt. “You need me to help, by…?”

“We have some holovideos ready to send out on a viral level to half the droids and computers in all the nearest star systems under oppression of the first order, to try and… reach out to them. But my concern is that the messages we’re trying to send out aren’t necessarily the ones people are actually going to connect with.”

“Ok…”

Organa shrugged her shoulders apologetically. “Most of us involved with the Resistance have been part of the cause in some way for our entire lives – either that, or we have some raw and recent reason to hate those we fight. That gives us an edge in terms of expecting loyalty, but when it comes to communicating with those from different backgrounds and viewpoints from our own… well, we suck at it. We’ve ran several different well-funded advertising campaigns over the last four years and none of them have resulted in the responding support we were hoping for, and, to be honest, counting on.”

Finn bit down on his lip, trying to wrangle his words into the right shape before pushing them out. “So… you want me to watch some videos?”

Her face slid into something like relief. “Only if you’re feeling up to it. Just… please let us know if you think these are any better.”

Finn must have watched hundreds on hundreds of instructional holovideos in his life, but he wasn’t sure that meant he was up for giving some kind of critique on new ones. But he was sure he didn’t want to disappoint General Organa. “Uh, sure! Leave them with me I guess and I’ll uh… get watching.”

She smiled warmly at him and laid her hands down on his. “Thank you, Finn. Start feeling better soon, won’t you? The resistance needs more young people like you, rebellions always rely on the young.”

Finn wasn’t sure what to say to the suddenly intense look in the General’s eye, but he nodded. He didn’t imagine there were many people who could look at that face and tell it any variation on ‘no’.

*


End file.
